[extropy-chat] Re: Famous author self destructs in public! Film at eleven.

[Samantha Atkins]

John,

Why are you resurfacing this tired "discussion" months and months  
after it originally was brought up in a completely different  
context?   Unless you are somewhere really far away and thus light  
speed lagged I see no reason for this rather boorish behavior.

- s

On Sep 14, 2005, at 12:53 PM, John-C-Wright at sff.net wrote:

> Mr. Smigrodzki asks a proper and difficult question: "There are  
> acts of
> commision and acts of commision with grave impact on the future  
> child, should
> one be born, many years later. Given the duty of caring for  
> children, which I
> hold to be self-evident, is it incumbent on *every* man and woman  
> to act in
> accordance with this duty? No, of course not - those who do not  
> intend to have
> children do not need to avoid genotoxic influences, and hepatitis  
> B. The duty of
> caring pertains only towards actual children, not might-have-beens,  
> not towards
> the children a nun or a priest might have had, had they chosen a  
> different
> vocation. I hope you will agree with me on this point."
>
> I respectfully decline to agree. Once the child exists, obviously,  
> the duty is
> immediate rather than theoretical: before conception, the child is
> theoretical—he may or may not ever be conceived.  Even if you and I  
> were to
> decide that theoretical duties do not yet attach, it would have no  
> necessary
> bearing on whether or not the duties exist once they attach.
>
> The question here is twofold: first, whether a man has duties  
> linking him to his
> children even before they are conceived (pre-prenatal, I suppose we  
> can call
> it), and second, what degree of attention and care need be paid to  
> those duties?
>
> I submit to your judgment that the answer to the second question  
> depends on the
> answer to the first. Do you agree that the negligence of a man who  
> takes no
> provision for the future is less the more unlikely is that future?
>
> For example, in my judgment, I would say that it shows a reckless  
> disregard of
> human life to fire a loaded weapon into a house that may or may not  
> be empty; It
> is negligent not to wear a helmet before mounting a motorcycle; it  
> is careless,
> but not negligent not to wear a helmet before mounting a bicycle;  
> it is not
> careless for a Virginian to walk abroad without his elephant gun.  
> This is
> because that a house might contain persons is likely, and the  
> damage from
> gunfire severe; motorcycle accidents are likely and the damage is  
> severe;
> bicycle spills are likely, but the damage far less severe; elephant  
> attacks in
> Virginia are unheard-of. So we have a rough spectrum of  
> recklessness to
> negligence, to carelessness.
>
> If a young woman with no prospect of marriage elects not to smoke  
> because she
> fears for the health of children she has not yet conceived, this  
> strikes me a
> careful, though I would not say a maiden has a duty to avoid  
> cigarettes just
> based on that likelihood. A pregnant woman runs a greater risk of  
> harm to the
> child if she smokes: I would call it negligent of her not to  
> foreswear her habit
> for nine months. A pregnant woman who does not give up her crack  
> habit for nine
> months, and runs the risk of birthing an addicted baby, shows a  
> recklessness
> toward the young life in her care.
>
> Applying this same line of reasoning, I would conclude that it  
> would be careful
> and prudent to avoid those things likely to cause harm even to  
> generations not
> yet conceived. I would say it only becomes a matter of duty when the
> carelessness is so great, or the danger so large, to make it  
> negligence.
>
> I will also point out that most moral systems make some provision  
> for the claims
> of generations yet to come, and say we should make reasonable  
> provision for
> them. Anyone who contributes to a museum or to a sober  
> conservationist movement,
> anyone who wishes to grant our great-grandchildren the benefit of  
> life under his
> nation’s laws and institutions, is acting from a similar  
> consideration.
>
> “Now, back to the situation you have considered: I would claim that  
> there is no
> material difference between the above issue, pre-conception duties,  
> and the
> issue you discuss, post-conception, pre-natal duties.”
>
> This depends on what we mean by ‘material’. In the first case the  
> child exists
> and in the second it does not. The difference is between  
> theoretical and actual.
>
> A man who joins the priesthood is not imprudent if he makes no  
> provision in his
> will for his heirs, because, in the normal course of events, he  
> will have none.
> A man whose child is in the womb of his trollop is dishonorable if  
> he does not
> marry her. What is unlikely in one case is actual in the other.  
> Somewhere along
> the spectrum of possible to probable to likely to inevitable there  
> is a material
> difference in the degree of care required to attend to our duties.
>
> Let me put it to you this way: is there a ‘material’ difference  
> between prenatal
> and postnatal duties of care? If you say yes, I will ask you why it is
> acceptable to ignore my baby’s needs five minutes before he emerges  
> from the
> womb, and unacceptable to ignore them five minutes after? If you  
> say no, I will
> ask you whether this means both prenatal and postnatal babies must  
> be cared-for,
> or whether his means both prenatal and postnatal babies may be  
> neglected?
>
> “While some may disagree, asserting ensoulment at the time of sperm's
> penetration through the zona pellucida (or maybe at formation of  
> the pre-nuclei,
> or maybe their fusion.... proponents of this idea tend to be quite  
> sketchy
> here), I will take the liberty of simply ignoring them, since I  
> don't believe in
> the existence of souls, and differences of a spiritual nature are  
> of no interest
> to me.”
>
> It would certainly be a more intuitively obvious vocabulary, if we  
> all agreed
> that the creatures which has “personhood” (that is, rights properly  
> defended at
> law), had “souls” and those that did not, did not. Then we could  
> suppose that
> souls were manifested by brain-activity, and argue that abortion  
> and euthanasia
> were allowable either before or after brain-activity is detected,  
> and capital
> punishment allowed when the actions of the convict showed his brain  
> activity
> malign, and thus his soul corrupt beyond hope of human penance.  
> However, these
> metaphysical speculations are beyond the scope of my present  
> argument. I am not
> arguing that children have souls when they are blastocysts and  
> therefore must be
> protected: I am arguing that destroying the blastocyst, or exposing  
> it to
> disease or any agency that might result in a birth defect, is  
> incompatible with
> a duty of prenatal care.
>
> “So, the situation does not materially change once two cells fuse  
> to form a
> zygote - the child is still a thing of the future.”
>
> Again, I suppose that depends on what you mean by ‘child.’ The  
> organism we are
> discussing has the genetic compliment of both parents. It is either  
> one sex or
> the other, XX or XY. It is clearly homo sapiens. When compaction  
> starts, he is
> already differentiating from totipotency into specialized  
> functions, i.e.
> therefore it is an organism. So, to recap: it has parents, it is  
> either a ‘he’
> or a ‘she’, and it is a member of the kingdom, class, phylum, order  
> and genus of
> its parents. It has various other real properties such as mass,  
> duration and
> extension. You can take a photograph of him or her.
>
> It also is either healthy or unhealthy: in other words, qualitative  
> statements
> which can only be made of living things can be made about it. If  
> there is such
> as thing as healthy and unhealthy, then normative statements can be  
> made:
> certain things can literally be said to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for it.
>
> In what possible sense of the word can you call this “still a thing  
> of the future”?
>
> Do you mean to say that that human organism, which is the child of  
> its parents
> exists in a physical and normative sense, having both mass and  
> duration, and
> having relationships of healthy and unhealthy, good and bad, lacks  
> that some
> immaterial and metaphysical essence known as “child-ness”? That  
> sounds like you
> are saying the organism is a child only in the biological and  
> material sense,
> not in the spiritual sense: in other words, you are claiming it is  
> not a child
> until he gets a soul. This seems to be against the spirit of your  
> earlier sentence.
>
> “A duty to care exists for consequential reasons, so as to  
> eliminate unwished-for
> experiences in actual humans - we need to care for children only  
> because without
> care they would suffer and die prematurely, something most humans  
> intensely
> dislike.”
>
> You will excuse me if I cannot agree. We care for our children  
> because we love
> them. We have a duty to care for them because some people do not  
> love them, or
> their passions are in some sense disordered from nature.  I would  
> care for my
> child even if he were dying of an incurable disease, and certain to  
> suffer pain
> that smothering him now with a pillow would prevent. Regarding only  
> the
> consequences of actions is not a proper basis for moral reasoning,  
> as it leads
> to absurd results. The ends do not justify the means.
>
> “But without the capacity to suffer and anticipate death, a zygote  
> cannot be by
> itself the focus of duties so defined.”
>
> I cannot agree with the standard. Are sensitive people granted a  
> higher duty of
> care than insensitive people? I will remind all loyal readers of  
> science
> fiction, that our hero Buck Rogers fell into suspended animation  
> sometime in the
> late 1920’s while spelunking in a cave, and will not wake until the  
> Twenty-Fifth
> century. He is utterly insensate. While in suspended animation, he  
> suffers
> neither pain nor has he any current capacity to anticipate death.  
> It is
> permissible to kill him at any point before he wakes? What about  
> just break his
> leg or put out his eye? Your standard says yes.
>
> Besides, you neglect the main thrust of my argument. Nothing in my  
> argument says
> the child’s humanity, awareness or personhood has any bearing on  
> our duties of
> prenatal care. Do you agree that mothers have a duty of prenatal  
> care? If so,
> you should regard it as negligent for a pregnant woman to expose  
> herself to
> known toxins or agents that cause birth defects or miscarriage. If  
> negligent
> aborticide is a breech of prenatal duties, ergo, a fortiori,  
> deliberate
> aborticide is also. That is the argument you must address.
>
> Loyal science fiction readers might recall the epsilons of BRAVE  
> NEW WORLD, who
> are injected while still in the womb with chemical agents to see to  
> it that they
> are born severely retarded. If the retardation is sufficient, then  
> the child
> will never be aware of the intelligence that was stolen from him.  
> By the
> standard you have announced, this would be a morally neutral, or  
> even acceptable
> act.
>
> “Therefore, in general a parent may be held responsible for failing  
> to fulfill
> his (pre-, per- or post-conception) duties only if the child is  
> actually formed.”
>
> This depends on what we mean by ‘actually formed.’ You are pointing  
> to an
> identifiable and individual living organism which neither sprang  
> into being out
> of nothing, nor has it the capacity, if it develops, to develop  
> into anything
> save a mature homo sapiens. Therefore it is an immature homo  
> sapiens. I admit it
> is not manifesting its potential development at an early stage of  
> development,
> but I would say that about a teenager also.
>
> “Should the new organism die naturally before birth, as happens  
> with about 85%
> of conceptuses, no duties have been breached by the parent, no  
> woman may be
> prosecuted for having hepatitis B.”
>
> Should anyone die naturally, there is no discussion at all. The  
> discussion is
> about deaths caused by negligence or caused deliberately. The  
> argument I put
> forth is that one cannot simultaneously condemn negligent  
> miscarriage while
> excusing deliberate miscarriage of the same duty.
>
> “Should the embryo be destroyed by an intentional action, again, no  
> duties have
> been breached, since the victimized person never existed at all.”
>
> This is a non-sequitur. You are conflating intentional and  
> unintentional
> actions. Should my house be picked up by a twister and dropped on  
> the Wicked
> Witch of the East, I am in nowise responsible for the death. Should  
> I falsely
> accuse my neighbor Tabitha to the Witch-finder, so that she is  
> burned at the
> stake, I am complicit in her death.
>
> I welcome you comments, which seem refreshingly well mannered,  
> considering the
> delicate nature of the subject matter.
>
> John C. Wright
>
>
>
>
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